The Book of Mordred (20 page)

"This here's a clean one," Cheston told her. "Ain't been used in a while, least not by prisoners. Not for this neither, I'd warrant." He winked at Romola though he still held Nimue's hand, probably hoping to find favor with both of them.

Romola took Aric's hand and led him in.

Nimue motioned, insisting for Cheston to enter first. Then she slammed the butt of the torch down on the back of his head. Whatever Romola's plan—it
wasn't
moving fast enough.

Romola, who had thrown her arms around Aries neck, suddenly brought her knee up hard enough to leave him too breathless to cry out. From the folds of her skirt she pulled out her dirk and drove it between his ribs.

Nimue's head was beginning to spin. She stooped to pick up the dropped keys, then leaned against the wall. She could smell the warm thick blood even from here.

Romola took a step toward where Cheston was sprawled on the floor, and Nimue said hastily, "A gag will do."

Romola pointed a finger at her. "Don't you give out on me now," she warned. Still, she stepped around Cheston and went to the door of the cell.

"You have blood on you," Nimue warned. "He'll see."

"You get him in here then."

Nimue stepped into the hall. It took two tries before she could call, "Any of that wine left?" Could he hear the quaver in her voice?

The young guard held up the empty jug.

Now what?
She swallowed hard and said, "Bring it anyway. We want to show you something." Did she sound saucy and pert, the way Romola did, or did she sound as foolish and scared to his ears as she did to hers?

But he got up; he brought the jug as he started down the corridor.

Nimue saw the glint of the knife still in Romola's hand, and she whispered, "You don't have to kill him."

"Don't start getting soft," Romola hissed.

Start?
Nimue thought. This whole business had gotten beyond her even as it began. But Romola was willing to give her at least half a try, for she stepped behind the door, though she still held the knife—just in case.

"Here, give me that." Nimue took the jug from the guard. "Would you like a little surprise?"

He grinned, and probably never saw his friends' bodies before she broke the jug over his head.

She and Romola tied and gagged the two living men, then locked the cell behind them.

Merlin, Nimue thought, would never have believed it.

"Now," Romola said. "Where are they keeping Dolph?"

Nimue led the way to the cell from which she had escaped just four days earlier. But when she held the torch up to the bars, in the sputtering light she could clearly see there was only one person there.

Too late, too late.

But it couldn't be too late.

The wizard needed a new body every ten days. She'd only been gone four.

She had seen one youth killed—Griffith—which left five.

They couldn't, she thought, they couldn't have killed more to punish for the escape attempt. The young men were too valuable.

For a moment the quivering shadows and the surprise confused her, but then she recognized the round baby face of the youth who had been a prisoner before the St. George group got there. "Wystan!" she said. "Where are the others?"

The boy wore a look of befuddled terror. He sat on the floor with his knees huddled to his chest and stared at her for a long moment before he got his mouth to work. "Who...?"

"It's me, Nimue." She saw a flicker of surprise, but she was used to getting a reaction whenever she said her name. "Nevil, I mean. You knew me as Nevil. I brought help." She fumbled with the key and flung the door open.

Wystan scuttled backwards. His hands fluttered anxiously, before settling on his knees, still drawn up close to his chest. "Help?" he asked—with a sidelong glance at Romola.

"We've gotten rid of the guards down here. Someone else is upstairs right now killing that wizard. Wystan, you're safe. Where are the others?"

But he wouldn't be convinced. "Only three of you?" he demanded in a shaking voice. "Three women?"

"Wystan!" she cried, but feared he couldn't be rushed. "The one upstairs is a knight. And, word has been sent to Camelot.
Where are the others?
"

"How has word been sent?" When she only looked at him in befuddled exasperation, he said, "Separate cells. They separated us after you made that fire.
You
made that fire, didn't you? Who is this knight?"

"What difference does that make? His name is Sir Mordred. But do you know which—"

"Because he's in danger. The fire started too quickly and you disappeared too thoroughly. They figured there was magic involved, and they figured you would be back. They've set a trap."

Nimue felt a chill up the back of her neck. "What kind of trap?"

"No time. You get the others." Standing, he indicated himself by resting his hand on his chest. "
I'll
warn this Mordred." He certainly seemed to have found his courage. Perhaps he was used to ordering women around.

Nimue ran her hand through her hair. Why did they have to keep separating? This was all so wrong, she could feel it.
Magic. Magic. Magic.
The warning sounded inside her head. The castle was suffused with this Halbert's evil power.

The boy said, "You'll be safe down here. Find the others, then wait in the guard area, on this side of the dungeon door. I'll bring your friend as soon as I can." His pale eyes lingered on Romola's bloody skirt. "You have a weapon?"

Sulkily, Romola handed him the dirk, which he slipped into his shirt as he stole out of the cell and back toward the guard area.

Nimue shuddered despite herself. "Let's find Dolph," she told Romola.

They went down the hall, knocking and calling at each door until there was only one door left.

"He said they were taken to separate cells," Nimue said. Plotting was hard, and her head ached.

"Maybe this leads to a different wing of cells?" Romola pointed to the latch, which had no lock.

Nimue could imagine.
Deepest dungeon,
she thought.
Torture room.
She stood with her hand on the door. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. But her mind felt strange, stuffed with cotton, the mental equivalent of a head cold; and she got vague and conflicting images. She opened the door.

This was a large room: The torch Romola held, which had burned almost to the last, lit only part of it. But that was enough to see she had been right.

The door swung closed behind them, smacking Nimue's bottom. Her attention, however, was on the shackles set high up on the wall, high enough so that a man with his wrists chained would dangle painfully, his feet not touching ground. Whips, of course. And thumbscrews. She recognized the back-breaking wheel and its cousin, the rack. Also an iron maiden. There were other devices with which she was thankfully unfamiliar. There was also a large metal cage where prisoners could be held, presumably to watch others being questioned before their own turn. It was from this dark corner that a voice called out, "Romola?"

"Dolph!" Romola ran forward, bringing the circle of light with her so that Nimue could see Dolph and the five youths with him.

Nimue paused, mid-step.

"The keys, Nimue. Hurry." Romola hugged her husband through the bars.

The
five
youths...

Oh, no. Oh, no.

"Nimue." Finally Romola stepped back, looking at Nimue. "What's the matter?"

"Dolph..." Nimue counted off. Somehow she managed to keep her voice relatively even. "Then there's the cooper's nephew, Boy, cobbler's apprentice, wainwright—I'm sorry, I don't know all your names." A tremor worked its way into her throat. "So what is Evan—whose body
I saw
Halbert take—what is
Evan
doing in there with you?"

The sixth man, who hadn't approached the front of the cage with the others, remained seated. Finally, slowly, he lifted his face to her: all curly hair and teeth, Evan, just as she remembered. But: "I don't be Evan nor Halbert," he said hoarsely. "I be Wystan."

Nimue didn't dispute it. She knew it for truth as soon as he spoke, and she called herself a fool for having missed all the signs the false Wystan had let pass.

The young men in the prison called out to her:

"Wizard made a second change..."

"They kept asking about you..."

"He said fight magic with magic..."

"It was the same as before..."

They all spoke at once, except for Reynards Boy, who may—for all Nimue knew—have been too simple for speech. "I know, I know," she said, too drained to fight the realization.

"Well, I don't," Romola said. "I don't understand any of it. What is going on?"

Nimue felt cold and numb. Which was good. The pain would set in later. What had she done?

She said, "Halbert transformed himself again—this time before he started to age. Now Halbert looks like Wystan, Wystan has poor dead Evan's body, and I,"—she closed her eyes—"I told Halbert enough to get Sir Mordred killed: The trap was down here all along." She hadn't trusted Mordred, but she was the one who had betrayed him.

Wystan scrambled to his feet. Now he grabbed her hand through the bars. "You be a famous sorceress—Dolph sez. You tell me: What of this body? Will it wear out like all of wizard's other bodies?"

"I don't know," she said as calmly as she could. She wished ... she wasn't sure how to wish, and so wished, once more, for everyone's well-being. Much good
that
wish had done so far. "I just don't know, Wystan," she admitted.

Romola said, "Well, talking is not going to help anything. Here, give me the keys." She handed Nimue the almost exhausted torch.

But none of the keys fit.

Of course they wouldn't.

"Maybe there's another set of keys out in the guard area?" one of the prisoners suggested hopefully.

Nimue mentally reached out, but this time the barrier was no longer cotton-stuffing soft. "We won't be able to get the door to this room open," she said.

Romola looked up, startled, from trying a key she had already seen wouldn't work. "That door doesn't have a lock."

It didn't. Wizards didn't need locks.

Nimue said nothing.

Romola looked at her quizzically. "It doesn't have a lock," she insisted. She started to back up slowly, then turned and ran to the door. She pulled, she pushed, she beat her hands on it. "It doesn't have a lock!"

The torch sputtered one more time, then went out entirely, leaving the darkened room with an oily, singed smell.

Nimue blindly eased down with her back to the torture chamber's cage. She could hear Romola still raging against the door and someone behind her, presumably Wystan or maybe it was the wainwright with his broken fingers, whimpering softly.

Calm down. Think rationally. Think like Halbert.
She closed her eyes, mere habit for there was nothing in this total darkness that could interfere with concentration. What would the wizard's next move be? Her mind fluttered off in several directions at once.

And suddenly settled on: Sir Dunsten.

She bit her lip and clenched her hands to keep from crying out loud. That was something else she had told Halbert—blithely handing out lethal information—that they'd sent to Camelot for help. She went over the conversation trying to remember the exact words. Had she actually volunteered the portly knight's name?

No, she decided. She had not spoken his name. And the wizard hadn't pressed, perhaps afraid to arouse suspicion.

Now, if she were Halbert, how would she stop an unknown knight from alerting the King? Men sent after him tonight would never catch up. Magic? Difficult, very difficult on a nameless, faceless man. He'd need more details first.

A shiver coincided with the memory of what room she was in. A room made to wring details out of the reluctant.

Oh, Merlin,
she moaned to herself.
What have I done?
And, more importantly,
What should I do now?

A long time passed in the darkness.

Then, finally, from the other side of the unlocked door that wouldn't open, a voice warned, "Do not try anything. Sir Bayard has a knife to Sir Mordred's throat."

Bayard. According to Dunsten and Mordred, Bayard was the lord who held Castle Ridgemont. A lord who, apparently, had no complaint against aiding a wizard-uncle who stole young men from the countryside and used them to prolong his own life. A lord who either took his orders from a renegade wizard, or had similar goals.

If Romola, still by the door, had a plan, and if someone having a knife to Mordred's throat disrupted it, she made no sound to indicate so.

The heavy door banged open and the room was flooded by the light of torches, which flickered and Crackled and stank of pitch. A dozen armed men crowded m, the first of whom did, indeed, have a knife to Mordred's throat.

Nimue scrambled to her feet. "Don't let him into your minds," she warned the prisoners, remembering how Evan, Roswald's son—the real Evan—had died not even struggling. "Make him fight for every advantage."